Life isn’t sunny without money
Body and soul separate too soon
We’ve learned there is no Easter Bunny
You must work hard and cannot swoon
Yet, to inherit the earth, you must first die
So test your freedoms as you fly
You have so little choice
And so I say: Rejoice
Especially you women
Take the day off to go swimmin’
As the GOP commits to fight for freedom, you may begin to ask for whom? Surely, there is no freedom for women to control their own bodies as now a couple dozen “conservative” states are enacting laws that mandate that women asking for an abortion undergo a forced sonogram as a way to shame them. Even if the pregnancy was caused by rape or incest, this denial of 4th amendment rights will be done by state functionaries with the cost to be borne by the woman despite the fact that she gets no medical benefit from the intrusion. Wisconsin, that last year slashed the rights of unions to negotiate, has also declared that women have no right to equal pay for equal work with the bill just signed by Scott Walker. That puts a consistent and official face on Republican policy no matter their utterings.
Several states controlled by Republican legislatures and governors are moving rapidly to tear rights away from women. While the given rationale is to enhance Christian morality, the consistent outcome is to reduce the power of women in our democratic society. Recent presidential candidate Rick Santorum, or “Sanitarium” as some of his Southern supporters call him, has said that he wants to “throw up” when he hears JFK talk about separation of Church and State. He sees this as a rejection of the concept of getting our basic rights from God. There is an almost delicious irony that it is exactly his theme that rights given by states can be taken by states that is being executed by right wing state governments across this great republic. No serious voter would have imagined that law settled in the1950s that guaranteed women the right to contraceptives would be threatened in 2012. Surely nobody imagined that the democratic process of voting for representatives would be shelved in favor of autocratic rule by unelected petty/party czars as now in Michigan. Of all the threats to democracy, I cannot imagine one worse than that now thriving in Michigan. In that state, controlled by an ultra-conservative majority, the governor has absolute authority to disenfranchise legally elected representatives and replace them with highly paid czars who report only to the governor and not to the people. Governor Snyder has, in fact, appointed single authorities to replace the governments of Benton Harbor, Flint, Highland Park, Ecorse, Pontiac and Hamtramck as well as several school districts. In other words, the governor has the power to void the elections of any Michigan political entity and supplant the elected with his appointment. If that sounds totalitarian, and it does, it has been executed in a totalitarian manner as well by violation of the Michigan rule that laws not specifically endorsed by 2/3 of the state legislature cannot be immediately put into effect. The second aberration has been fulfilled in the state legislature where the majority has not allowed a count to prove/disprove that 2/3 voted to support “immediate effect.” No Democrats have voted to support the aberration and video shows Democrats trying to get that count and being rejected by the Majority Speaker. It is a putsch in America.
Surely, Michigan is not the first state to experience money issues or even to have elected politicians who cannot immediately solve a financial crisis. In other states, a receiver has been appointed, often by a court, to guide elected politicians and even manage money. I have known where a receiver was required to sign city checks over a given amount, say $5,000. This is the very first time that I have known of a complete takeover by a governor with the abrogation of duly elected officials. Further, the local czars appointed by Governor Snyder can dispose of city property by selling it to friends or otherwise deprive the city of property/revenue without review. Those are dictatorial powers, not compatible with democracy. Another unique aspect of this dictatorship is that only minority cities and towns were grabbed. This alone poses a threat of creating a permanent underclass of minorities in Michigan. Women have long been subject to deprivation by systems that pay men more for equal work and by systems that block access to women’s healthcare such as that offered by Planned Parenthood. Mittens Romney, when asked by a woman how she could get healthcare if Planned Parenthood were eliminated callously remarked that she “was free to seek the healthcare anywhere,” as if she had the money to do so. Please tell me how a woman who is so resource poor that she depends upon Planned Parenthood for her healthcare can possibly shop for healthcare. This is an insidious sentence to permanent poverty because the woman will be denied healthcare and accelerated in her cycle of poverty. Contraceptives may be available for women with money to pay for them, but poor women simply are not able. The poverty cycle gets boosted by unwanted pregnancies. Women susceptible to complicated gynecological issues need special and expensive contraceptives. Otherwise, they are unable to get meaningful and fairly compensated work. So we have a concentrated effort by the right wing that now controls the GOP to worsen the status quo for women and minorities. Combine this with a tax code that favors the wealthy and demands no sacrifice from them and we begin to see the concrete harden for an ever more permanent underclass.
Historically, we once saw men and women, especially women, lift themselves by their bootstraps with two major components being available to them. We actually had 1) a safety net in healthcare and aid for food subsistence as well as 2) an affordable secondary education system. By using the circular argument that women have no right to equal pay (Wisconsin, 2012 despite Lilly Ledbetter Act) because they may have to leave the workplace due to unwanted pregnancies or health issues and then denying women cheap healthcare and contraception, we have denied them equal access to the workplace. Policies that support outrageously high secondary education costs, seal off the last remaining exit from poverty. So the cycle of the illogical is completed. Women are not entitled to equal pay for equal work because they may not become qualified in the workplace, and our policies will ensure that the women cannot become qualified. While some may see a religious message in all that, I see an economic message. Across this nation, women are being told that the Viagra so needed to enable men to get them pregnant is economically justified, but contraception is not economically justified. Everybody knows that preventive healthcare is about 90% cheaper than emergency room visits or pregnancies. Is the motive for this policy religion or economics? Have women become too competitive for us men in the workplace? Women and minorities suffered most from the 2007 recession. Is it best to write them off as a permanent underclass? When we do hire them (women and minorities), we can pay them less, thus achieving greater competitive power and allowing even higher profits for the real people: “Corporations are people, my friend.” (Mitt Romney, August 11, 2011, Iowa State Fair).
As we continue to lower the cost of labor and compete for the lowest available markets, we need fewer educated people and can return to the good old days of Charles Dickens. The wealthy will protect us and our children by putting us all to work for less. “God Bless us, every one.”
We have an election coming and we need to see what has happened to our nation through the current redistribution of wealth from the have littles to the have lots through corporate welfare/socialism and tax systems that reward wealth (Romney pays less that 15%?) We must take on that mission with as much determination as we have to stop the reverse. Real tax rates are the lowest they have been in more than 50 years and wealth inequity charts demonstrate that we are out of balance. Did we learn that trickle down does not work? The Bush tax cuts have been operating for more than 10 years. Has that helped anybody in the middle or lower classes climb the economic ladder?
Summer will soon be upon us. It is nearly time to go swimming, but keep your eyes peeled for the sharks out there. They will have a feeding frenzy at election time. The chum is in the water.
Peace,
George Giacoppe
14 April 2012
Showing posts with label women's rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label women's rights. Show all posts
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Sunday, March 04, 2012
Barefoot and Pregnant
What do we hope for our progeny
In a time of growing misogyny
When women are seen as the enemy
Who must not be allowed to be free
And the state must control their reactions
Through clergy and conservative factions
So the greater half is reduced
And occasionally seduced
For cheap labor and motherly chores
To be labeled as sluts and whores
Turn off the time machine. Here we are back in the 1950s and going hell bent for leather for 1919. Let us remove all the restrictions on the corporations that got us into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and start controlling women instead. It is a trade-off. The purveyors of “small government” suddenly want to bring back the nostalgia of a never-to-return agrarian society where women did chores and had babies and did not vote. In 1920, the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote. Now, the Commonwealth of Virginia is actively preventing women from exercising the right to privacy of her own bodies by imposing an invasive and medically unnecessary procedure of enduring a uterine ultrasound examination. Worse, the procedure is mandated by the state and the woman cannot opt out for any reason, religious or otherwise. While the forced procedure is conducted, the woman may or may not view the images produced by the state and for the state. That is her choice. Would you prefer to call it a Nanny state or Fascist state? That is your choice.
Meanwhile the GOP applauds itself for fighting for freedom. They champion freedom: freedom from health care, freedom from the safety net, freedom from fair taxation, freedom from the 4th Amendment. You know, freedom. We can hide those freedoms under the rock of religious freedom if anybody objects. There is still more delicious irony in this attack on women. The same bishops of the Catholic Church that used to talk fervently about each of us forming a good conscience before making big decisions has joined the parade of nannies to “guide” our women based on their collective clerical conscience. These bishops are so perceptive that they know what evil lurks in the hearts of women although they were absolutely blind to the actual sexual abuse that occurred in its ranks pledged to celibacy. You should be amazed. Pope Pius XII, hardly a wild-eyed liberal, approved the use of hormonal treatment for women (Enovid, then) to avoid or eliminate dangerous conditions such as excessive bleeding or ovarian cyst formation in 1958, the year he died from complications related to hiccups. Now the American bishops have eschewed the Pope’s advice and decided that women are too irresponsible to use medical advice to form a good conscience and prevent harm to their own bodies. Incidentally, about 60% of prescriptions for the “pill” are for reasons other than birth control, but the bishops and the GOP are not about to listen to some evil physician or, worse, a woman and, God forbid, a female physician.
Virginia is not alone in condemning/assigning women to be members of the permanent underclass. Other states are rushing to enact anti-contraception laws and some are defining personhood as beginning at the moment of conception or even before a zygote is implanted in the womb. Paragons of high virtue such as Rush Limbaugh with 4 marriages and no children are calling women sluts and prostitutes for using contraceptives regardless of their personal conditions or medical reasons. No, this could not be political, could it? Nobody would viciously insult women and castigate them for exercising what used to be rights. It also appears that Rush and others attacking women have no clue how reproduction works on the biological level. Rush speaks of using ”more and more pills” to have all the sex these women want. Of course, I will give Rush some slack since he has had no children and yet is stuck on Viagra and Oxycontin. Some may say addicted. He may not understand the process at all. One pill per day is not enough for Rush, so he must think that it is not enough for women, either.
Politically, it seems that this urgent and violent obsession with women exercising their rights is a losing proposition that cannot endear women to either the ultraconservative clergy or the ultraconservative party. Think again. If legislatures such as Virginia and other GOP controlled bodies can put rules in place that place the state in charge of each woman’s body, what difference will a woman make in her own decisions. What women think will not matter. They are irrelevant.
As I ponder the potential reasons for this abusive and regressive policy, I arrive at only a couple of reasons. The reasons reverberate in both the GOP and the bishop’s council. The first and most trivial reason is that the Tea Party has assumed control of the Republican Party and that Tea Party tail is wagging the GOP dog. Boehner has shown fear of the Tea Party and has only talked about the economy while everything done in the House of Representatives from HR 1 on has been aimed at promoting a conservative cultural agenda. Conservative bishops who have done nothing to promote the Church or build its membership are pleased that attention is being directed at the “sinfulness” of others rather than their own. What need have we for forming our own consciences when we know that women are using contraception…98% of Catholic women are using it? And Pius XII be damned, we know better than to allow women to make decisions on their health. We even know that more abortions will result from this demand for purity, but what of it, if we achieve our lofty goal of appearing to prevent
contraception?
Women, including non-Catholics such as Ms. Sandra Fluke, would abuse access to health care for their personal pleasure. And there should be no restrictions to Viagra or vasectomies because that is different and does not affect the true cause of the problem; the women themselves. The second and more substantive reason is that women have begun to strive for equality in everything including equal pay for equal work. Wisconsin has prohibited equal pay for women with Governor Scott Walker proudly leading that charge. This may seem insidious, but think of the effect. By pushing women to a permanent lower economic status, they will become more dependent on men and less likely to gain economic power. They can safely go back to the kitchen and nursery where they belong and two income families will have a lower profile thus returning us all to the glories of the farm. It is politically ingenious and bishops will love it. Everything will finally be back in its proper place. Yes, women may have less money for frivolous things like shoes, but they won’t need them as long as they are pregnant and in the kitchen where they belong. Oh, by the way, America will be more competitive for it with lower wages and no uppity women using their consciences. The American dream can be created by Rush Limbaugh, at least 4 presidential candidates, myriad bishops, the entire business world and nearly everybody except women. It is ironic that Protestants were included in the Church prohibition thus illustrating that by claiming religious freedom, a Catholic University imposed its views on women of a different persuasion. Is that not the basis of the claim by bishops that their religious rights were being curtailed? “It is against our principles as Catholics?” Really? Is not establishment of religion a specific prohibition of the First Amendment? Adult Protestant women students must accept the tenets of Catholicism to receive health care? Obama quickly placed the responsibility on health insurance companies. That not only gave a fig leaf to the Catholic Church, but it complied with the First Amendment. It also permitted women to exercise their consciences. Still the bishops complained. “Separation of Church and State” is denounced by Santorum, but that is what has kept us from fighting a “Christian Taliban” at home.
Conservatives still have to work on repealing the 19th Amendment. Zealots might find ways to nullify it. Fortunately, women represent more than half of all voters. They provided 53% of voters in 2008. It may be that women vote their consciences. That seems to be a refreshing possibility.
Peace,
George Giacoppe
06 March 2012
In a time of growing misogyny
When women are seen as the enemy
Who must not be allowed to be free
And the state must control their reactions
Through clergy and conservative factions
So the greater half is reduced
And occasionally seduced
For cheap labor and motherly chores
To be labeled as sluts and whores
Turn off the time machine. Here we are back in the 1950s and going hell bent for leather for 1919. Let us remove all the restrictions on the corporations that got us into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and start controlling women instead. It is a trade-off. The purveyors of “small government” suddenly want to bring back the nostalgia of a never-to-return agrarian society where women did chores and had babies and did not vote. In 1920, the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote. Now, the Commonwealth of Virginia is actively preventing women from exercising the right to privacy of her own bodies by imposing an invasive and medically unnecessary procedure of enduring a uterine ultrasound examination. Worse, the procedure is mandated by the state and the woman cannot opt out for any reason, religious or otherwise. While the forced procedure is conducted, the woman may or may not view the images produced by the state and for the state. That is her choice. Would you prefer to call it a Nanny state or Fascist state? That is your choice.
Meanwhile the GOP applauds itself for fighting for freedom. They champion freedom: freedom from health care, freedom from the safety net, freedom from fair taxation, freedom from the 4th Amendment. You know, freedom. We can hide those freedoms under the rock of religious freedom if anybody objects. There is still more delicious irony in this attack on women. The same bishops of the Catholic Church that used to talk fervently about each of us forming a good conscience before making big decisions has joined the parade of nannies to “guide” our women based on their collective clerical conscience. These bishops are so perceptive that they know what evil lurks in the hearts of women although they were absolutely blind to the actual sexual abuse that occurred in its ranks pledged to celibacy. You should be amazed. Pope Pius XII, hardly a wild-eyed liberal, approved the use of hormonal treatment for women (Enovid, then) to avoid or eliminate dangerous conditions such as excessive bleeding or ovarian cyst formation in 1958, the year he died from complications related to hiccups. Now the American bishops have eschewed the Pope’s advice and decided that women are too irresponsible to use medical advice to form a good conscience and prevent harm to their own bodies. Incidentally, about 60% of prescriptions for the “pill” are for reasons other than birth control, but the bishops and the GOP are not about to listen to some evil physician or, worse, a woman and, God forbid, a female physician.
Virginia is not alone in condemning/assigning women to be members of the permanent underclass. Other states are rushing to enact anti-contraception laws and some are defining personhood as beginning at the moment of conception or even before a zygote is implanted in the womb. Paragons of high virtue such as Rush Limbaugh with 4 marriages and no children are calling women sluts and prostitutes for using contraceptives regardless of their personal conditions or medical reasons. No, this could not be political, could it? Nobody would viciously insult women and castigate them for exercising what used to be rights. It also appears that Rush and others attacking women have no clue how reproduction works on the biological level. Rush speaks of using ”more and more pills” to have all the sex these women want. Of course, I will give Rush some slack since he has had no children and yet is stuck on Viagra and Oxycontin. Some may say addicted. He may not understand the process at all. One pill per day is not enough for Rush, so he must think that it is not enough for women, either.
Politically, it seems that this urgent and violent obsession with women exercising their rights is a losing proposition that cannot endear women to either the ultraconservative clergy or the ultraconservative party. Think again. If legislatures such as Virginia and other GOP controlled bodies can put rules in place that place the state in charge of each woman’s body, what difference will a woman make in her own decisions. What women think will not matter. They are irrelevant.
As I ponder the potential reasons for this abusive and regressive policy, I arrive at only a couple of reasons. The reasons reverberate in both the GOP and the bishop’s council. The first and most trivial reason is that the Tea Party has assumed control of the Republican Party and that Tea Party tail is wagging the GOP dog. Boehner has shown fear of the Tea Party and has only talked about the economy while everything done in the House of Representatives from HR 1 on has been aimed at promoting a conservative cultural agenda. Conservative bishops who have done nothing to promote the Church or build its membership are pleased that attention is being directed at the “sinfulness” of others rather than their own. What need have we for forming our own consciences when we know that women are using contraception…98% of Catholic women are using it? And Pius XII be damned, we know better than to allow women to make decisions on their health. We even know that more abortions will result from this demand for purity, but what of it, if we achieve our lofty goal of appearing to prevent
contraception?
Women, including non-Catholics such as Ms. Sandra Fluke, would abuse access to health care for their personal pleasure. And there should be no restrictions to Viagra or vasectomies because that is different and does not affect the true cause of the problem; the women themselves. The second and more substantive reason is that women have begun to strive for equality in everything including equal pay for equal work. Wisconsin has prohibited equal pay for women with Governor Scott Walker proudly leading that charge. This may seem insidious, but think of the effect. By pushing women to a permanent lower economic status, they will become more dependent on men and less likely to gain economic power. They can safely go back to the kitchen and nursery where they belong and two income families will have a lower profile thus returning us all to the glories of the farm. It is politically ingenious and bishops will love it. Everything will finally be back in its proper place. Yes, women may have less money for frivolous things like shoes, but they won’t need them as long as they are pregnant and in the kitchen where they belong. Oh, by the way, America will be more competitive for it with lower wages and no uppity women using their consciences. The American dream can be created by Rush Limbaugh, at least 4 presidential candidates, myriad bishops, the entire business world and nearly everybody except women. It is ironic that Protestants were included in the Church prohibition thus illustrating that by claiming religious freedom, a Catholic University imposed its views on women of a different persuasion. Is that not the basis of the claim by bishops that their religious rights were being curtailed? “It is against our principles as Catholics?” Really? Is not establishment of religion a specific prohibition of the First Amendment? Adult Protestant women students must accept the tenets of Catholicism to receive health care? Obama quickly placed the responsibility on health insurance companies. That not only gave a fig leaf to the Catholic Church, but it complied with the First Amendment. It also permitted women to exercise their consciences. Still the bishops complained. “Separation of Church and State” is denounced by Santorum, but that is what has kept us from fighting a “Christian Taliban” at home.
Conservatives still have to work on repealing the 19th Amendment. Zealots might find ways to nullify it. Fortunately, women represent more than half of all voters. They provided 53% of voters in 2008. It may be that women vote their consciences. That seems to be a refreshing possibility.
Peace,
George Giacoppe
06 March 2012
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